Is it Time to Rethink Your Recruiting Solution?
Recruitment partnerships aren’t supposed to feel like guesswork. But when hiring gets harder and the metrics don’t improve, many companies find themselves wondering if their recruiting provider is still doing its job.
The trouble is, it’s not always obvious when a provider has stopped serving your needs—until business-critical roles go unfilled, internal confidence wanes, and hiring managers start looking for workarounds.
Here are five indicators that it may be time to re-evaluate your recruitment solution—along with context, questions, and examples based on what we’ve seen supporting hiring across 30+ industries at Skywalk Group.
Your Core Hiring Metrics Are Flat-or Falling
The most immediate way to assess your recruiting providers’ performance is to look at the numbers. Is your time-to-fill improving? Are hiring managers more satisfied year over year? Are your acceptance rates climbing?
When those indicators stall or start trending down, it’s not just a reflection of a tough labor market—it’s often a sign that your provider hasn’t adapted. According to SHRM, the average time-to-fill sits at 44 days across industries, but internal data often tells a more revealing story. What’s the bottleneck? Where are candidates falling off? Are you reviewing enough qualified talent quickly?
Recruiting providers should be able to answer those questions using your own systems, not vague benchmarks. If the reporting is shallow—or missing—it’s likely the insights are too.
2. Your Cost Model Doesn’t Flex With Your Business
Hiring rarely follows a straight line. Markets shift, funding changes, product plans evolve. When that happens, rigid contracts and minimum commitments can force unnecessary spend—or worse, restrict your ability to scale when you need to move fast.
One of our clients came to us with a need to staff more than 50 roles over a two-month period. Just a few weeks into the project, their priorities changed dramatically. Instead of enforcing a rigid contract or adding fees, we simply scaled down our support—no penalties, no red tape. That flexibility preserved their capital and their trust.
If your provider can’t adapt to changing conditions, it’s not a partner—it’s a fixed cost.
3. Your Tech Stack Is Underused and Under-Optimized
Technology should accelerate hiring, not just track it. Yet many recruiting providers operate within a client’s ATS or CRM without helping them get more value out of those tools.
We often find that companies have powerful tech they’re only partially using. Skywalk’s operations team regularly steps in to assist with ATS administration, streamline workflows, implement automation, and help interpret the data those tools produce. The goal isn’t just to “use the system”—it’s to make it work harder for the business.
If your provider doesn’t have meaningful conversations with you about your tech and how to improve its ROI, you're leaving efficiency and insight on the table.
4. You’re Seeing High Turnover on Your RPO Team
Continuity matters. The average tenure of a recruiter in staffing is just 18 months. If your provider is cycling through talent constantly, institutional knowledge gets lost and so does consistency in candidate experience.
At Skywalk Group, our operational support team has an average tenure of five years—nearly unheard of in the industry. We’ve built progression paths and regular training into our delivery model, so clients aren’t just getting a recruiter—they’re getting a practiced, informed team with staying power.
If your support team is constantly changing, it’s worth asking what kind of internal investment your provider is making in its people.
5. You’re Told “We Specialize in Your Industry” Without Proof
Industry specialization is often marketed as a primary differentiator—but it can be overstated. What really matters is whether your recruiting provider understands your hiring needs, aligns to your internal workflows, and brings recommendations based on real recruiting data—not recycled assumptions.
We’ve successfully supported companies in everything from manufacturing to finance to professional services not because we specialize in all of them, but because we’ve developed adaptable teams, smart processes, and a framework for quickly understanding client environments.
If your provider claims deep expertise but can’t show the outcomes to support it, consider that a red flag.
So—Is It Time to Make a Change?
Not necessarily. But it is time to ask better questions.
Are our results improving or plateauing?
Do we understand what’s working—and what’s not?
Are we getting recommendations or just activity?
Is our provider integrated with our systems and culture?
Are we confident this partner will grow with us?
At Skywalk Group, our model is built on adaptability, transparency, and partnership. We don’t believe recruitment should be a black box or a locked-in contract. It should be a conversation—and a collaboration that drives real results.
We'll be sharing more insights this July when we publish findings from our Candidate and Client Sentiment Survey, capturing how real people across the market are experiencing hiring in 2025. If you’d like to receive that data—or explore a conversation—get in touch.